Wednesday, October 28, 2009

The Modern Warfare 2 controversy to come

For weeks, not one television network took the trouble to examine the context in which Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor made the “make policy” and “wise latina” remarks that fed this summer's 24-hour news cycle. I can only imagine how they'll handle footage captured from the forthcoming Modern Warfare 2 in which players unconscionably massacre civilians during a terrorist attack on an airport. If they weren't willing to sit through the Duke University and Berkeley Law School speeches from which Sotomayor's commentary was stripped, they certainly aren't about to play a videogame before using it to tar an entire medium by association.

Of course, without that context it's impossible to come to any worthwhile conclusions (including whether developer Infinity Ward was courageous to include intellectually challenging content that can sustain complicated readings; foolhardy in its assumption that meaningfully violent videogames can come of age in the present reporting climate; or crass in its belief that no press is bad press). It is, however, fair to frame questions. A few that come to my mind include:

Would an alternative approach effectively “establish the depth of evil and the cold-bloodedness of a rogue Russian villain” and “add to the urgency of the player's mission to stop them.” What if the scene, for example, cast the players as a counter-terrorist who monitors the massacre while en route to the airport where he will engage the enemy? And what, if anything, will the answer tell us about the differences in reading a novel narrated from a monster's point of view, and in acting monstrously in a videogame where the player presumably has other options?

What happens when the player turns and attacks the terrorists? Do they die, or does the game end then and there (since the story sustains only one outcome and the bad guys need to live in order to play their part in the escape scene at end of the level)? If the latter, must we comply with the terrorists to complete the mission and continue the story? I don't see why not when the character we play is destined to die.

Must we commit mass murder to appreciate the extent of its evil?

Is the scene's ending intended to serve as absolution not only for the character -- a CIA agent complicit in mass murder even should he never fire a shot -- but also for the player who presumably will want to “kill” the part of himself that played such a role?

I agree with your points, but IW has the rights to do whatever they want. It is their piece of art, and no matter how disturbing it is, they have to right to keep it as it is. IW specifically wanted the player to do something that the player, hopefully, didn't want to do. Even though I am opposed to this scene, it does have a much stronger emotional impact than, in your words, playing as a counter terrorists, which has been done plenty of times.

However, this is a delicate subject matter and IW has chosen a course of maximum controversy and confrontation. Furthermore, IW's decision will affect how the entire gaming industry is perceived by a too-often misinformed public. So I would argue that IW has obligations in this matter.

If this is little more than Infinity Ward's answer to the question of, "How you guys gonna top the nuke?" then it starts to look rather craven. Shock for shock's sake is an overused tool.

A scene like that seems to demand a seriously thoughtful, mature game. If the game opens with the massacre, and then goes back to being a by-the-numbers military fantasy, then there is no way the game can carry the weight of such a moment.

And it is worth asking whether or not there were other ways of handling this, because there is a significant difference between being a witness or victim in such an event and being the perpetrator. Why is it important that the player be a trigger-man in an attack that's going to call up memories of things like Beslan and Columbine? If it's a question of immediacy, why can't the player's POV be of someone in the crowd of victims? It would still be a disturbing sequence, both familiar and believable.

When you put the gun in the hands of players, you are inviting them to enjoy it as well as be repelled by it. You are inviting them to execute the wounded who are trying to crawl to safety, and shoot down the people just trying to help other victims. That carries a lot of meanings, many of them disturbing. Such moments have to be earned.

Having not played the game, I can't comment as to the specific content of the scene you describe.

More generally, though, I agree that our evaluations, and more specifically our moral judgments, are highly sensitive to the context of the situations in which we make them. If a game presents the player with a challenging situation, a situation in which the player's own ethical principles conflict, but does not then allow for the player to make a real choice with its attendant consequences, all it has achieved is frustrating sense of fatalism. At its worse, one gets games like GTA4 where the initially empathetic Nico becomes a schizophrenic killer who has no identifiable moral compass even as he is presented with situations that might challenge the player's.

I'd love to read an interview about Infinity Ward's creation of this scene and what they hoped to achieve. That would be a credible piece of games journalism and not the sort of backlash that will likely follow Fox New's discovery of this new whipping boy for the corruption of culture and "values."

Rob, I think the fact that IW said that "Modern Warfare 2 is a fantasy action game designed for intense, realistic game play that mirrors real life conflicts, much like epic, action movies," affirms the probability that the game will not be able to "carry the weight of such a moment".

It's unfortunate that all major press is going to take this out of context.

It's not about whether or not the medium is art or whether Infinity Ward actually pull off what they're trying to achieve. None of that will matter when all the non-gaming public will see is the scene out of context.

Even if it is a profoundly affecting scene, that will be heavily outweighed in the near future by cherry-picking scaremonger newspeople and that's not really good for anyone.

As much as I hate to say it, I feel like this would be so much more sincere by a smaller company. With Activision money and lawyers, this seems like a mix of thought provoking and sales provoking and that bums me out.

Personally, this idea leaves me feeling fairly excited. Anxious of course, out of fear that either IW ward will botch the attempt or are seeking controversy for PR's sake as you alluded to in your article Shawn, however I believe that situations where the player plays an antagonist are a powerful technique unique to the medium of videogames.

Since plays must actively utilise their agency in order to 'succeed' in this segment, there's fair scope here for Infinity Ward to not merely use this as a device to justify the 8 levels of military porn as they did with the revolution sequence in the first game, but instead to make a compelling statement about the subjective nature of right and wrong, to distinguish the plot of MW2 from the black and white approach taken in most videogame narratives. It can also be an opportunity for IW to have the player question themselves; whether they enjoy shooting the civilians leads in to what extent we play FPS's as a story (in which case we abhor being made to play the antagonist) or to what extent we play these games only as a power fantasy. It's gratuitously fatalistic as Sean said, but there's some important questions that could be asked here.

Anyways, I'm sorry if that all got a little incoherent. Nice post Shawn, hope to see more content on this blog :)

@Stump Sock- I hope you are wrong... But I expect you will be right. Even if IW succeeds in creating a powerful, introspective game (or game moment) that forces the player to confront and question his assumptions and perceptions of terrorism and violence and retribution... I cynically concede that even THEN, the news media will surely have NOTHING to offer but superficial kneejerk sensationalism and alarmist hand-wringing.

To me, however, the potential of such material in the hands of such a talented developer is exciting. Can't wait to play it.

I know the mainstream media is going to milk this for all it's worth, that goes without saying, and none of them will remember that the beloved Steven Spielberg made a movie that focused on terrorist. So with that aside, the thing I'm most curious about is: can we affect the outcome of that intro mission by not killing the civilians?

Between this undercover airport mission, and the clip that depicts Washington being bombed to hell, I can't wait to see if Infinity Ward handles the material in a mature, thoughtful way, or if this is all little more than evocative imagery. Given their heritage, I predict the former.

While I agree that a lot of questions can be raised by their decision to put the player in that role, I don't think a developer should feel obliged to settle those questions even for themselves before deciding to include such content. I think putting that kind of content out there and letting individual users decide how they feel about it is a completely valid approach. I have a certain amount of faith in IW's judgement in such cases. I know the Spectre Gunship level in the last CoD made a lot of people think, and I have no doubt this will as well.

As for possibly tarring the industry in the eyes of the ill-informed, sure - it will probably hurt, but I just don't think we should ever burden a creative pursuit with that consideration. Let the chips fall.

I think we all have a pretty good idea how the media -- the people who labeled the 360 the "sexbox" during the Mass Effect incident -- will handle this newest gaming controversy courtesy of Infinity Ward. But the more interesting issue involves whether the scene is really controversial at all.

I for one don't think IW is pursuing "maximum controversy", as Rob so eloquently put it in an above comment.

Let's identify a TRULY controversial scene so that we might compare it with what IW is actually doing.

-Affiliating the airport terrorists with Al Qaeda, and naming all of them Muhammad. Perhaps in this alternate scenario the Danish cartoons were published in the U.S., and are clearly plastered over some of the walls.

I think any sane person has to agree (based on the airport footage) that IW has not come close to this at all. All we have here is a very moderately controversial scene including those damned Evil Russians(TM) committing yet another act of villainy.

The point is, IW has carefully decoupled the scene from the very element that would actually make it a real controversy -- the awful scent of religious extremism via Islam that is wafting out of the Middle East.

IW is getting it both ways, by convincing thoughtful people like Rob that they actually have balls, while simultaneously dodging any flak that ACTUAL controversy would create.

Keep all this in mind as the 'controversy' debate takes flight, my friends.

I suspect that you will be unable to fire your gun until that first fusillade of bullets is fired. And then, if you do decide to shoot the terrorists, that they will fire back and the scene will end and will move onto the next one.

Everything we're talking about IW has already agonized about.

What I find most interesting is how the scene makes me re-think for a moment all the killing I do in games. I've killed vast virtual populations - often with glee. But suddenly it's wrong when it's people in an airport, rather than enemy soldiers/terrorists/mercenaries/henchmen. Each one of them someone's miracle.

@Artemus Well, no, it's not "only controversial for people who can't make (sic) the difference between reality and fiction." A work of fiction doesn't get a pass simply because it's not a factual document. Take for instance the novel "The Turner Diaries," which has as its protagonist a white supremacist intent on eliminating all "non-white" races from the US. The novel is clearly a racist document (there is no ambiguity about the author's view of racism) and in fact is believed to have been direct inspiration for the Oklahoma City bombing. Or your own example, the Bible -- I would suspect that you would find plenty of morally objectionable content in what you describe as a 'work of fiction'?

Yeah, I agree with Flitcraft (Rob) up there. I'll just slam a few of my tweets/comments together to convey my own thoughts.

"Good = IW is doing that, Bad = It's pandering and it doesn't really affect me personally. Good = If it gets lambasted, the gaming community will stand up for it, Bad = I'm gonna be one of those 'the nuke was better' people. Unknown = The context in which it's set, rendering my response able to change.

Ironically, I classify the possible media backlash of this as 'terrorism' in itself; instilling fear in people to convince them something is wrong. I actually welcome the ignorant onslaught though, because gamers will be forced to defend themselves and this title.

At this point, I'm just sighing at whoever let the video slip. They screwed up its impact and ultimately affected how progressive the sequence will turn out to be in the end (which is assuming it's NOT what Rob described above as the title simply going back to military fantasy afterwards).

"When you put the gun in the hands of players, you are inviting them to enjoy it as well as be repelled by it. You are inviting them to execute the wounded who are trying to crawl to safety, and shoot down the people just trying to help other victims. That carries a lot of meanings, many of them disturbing. Such moments have to be earned."

I do believe that's the whole point. That kind of game play will most certainly cause any rational person to finish the scene thinking "what the hell did I just do?"

I see great potential in this scene. I can see both sides of how this part of the game will affect or be affected by the rest of the narrative and the chances for the scene being meaningless or meaningful. However, should the game prove to support this scene with a compelling storyline throughout, I can see Infinity Ward's game finally showing the world how significant a video game can be, both culturally and artistically.

Sure, we've had other games evoke some emotion in game playing, but so far never to the degree that just this single moment has - at least, not as far spreading (and by that I mean beyond the gaming community).

So, in this light, I anxiously await my chance to play through this game and hope that it delivers on a promise to change the perception of video games in a big, big, big way.

According to telegraph.co.uk, it's been passed by the BBFC with an 18 rating & no cuts, which is a good indication that in context the scene is ok for grown-ups.

To me it just seems like an interactive version of the 'kill 100 innocents to save a million' subplots that 24 endlessly upped the ante with, except conveniently concluding with Jack Bauer getting his silly chin blown off.

I'm sure in a few weeks when we're all soaking up bullets amidst a tsunami of cranberry snapple, & the pounding Hans Zimmer score drives us beyond the clown-car AI respawners, both press & players alike will realise that MW2 is as banal & uncontroversial as a certain Fox TV series that I wish would share the brevity of its 2-digit title.

I’ve really been hoping to find an outlet for my feelings on the leaked Modern Warfare 2 video, because I think I have some food for thought.

It’s widely known that Infinity Ward is a right-leaning studio, on average. They have been reported to donate plenty of money to the Republicans come election time, for instance. I think that the video is actually a commentary on the legitimacy of War on Terrorism. The game is called Modern Warfare, but the terrorism featured in the video simply isn’t warfare at all. It’s terrorism.

It’s been readily assumed that the video highlights the game’s beginning and that the game to follow is going to be about the good guys fighting back against the perpetrators featured in the opening. If that ends up being the case, Infinity Ward is suggesting that acts of terrorism justify warfare as a response. This is the same policy the Bush Administration operated upon and the world rejected.

Perhaps after Modern Warfare 2 as dominates the mainstream, the public won’t even realize they’ve been lead to accept responding to terrorism with acts of war.

What do you think? I agree that we can't come to any meaningful conclusions yet, but I'd hate to this hypothesis washed away amidst the revulsion and praise Infinity Ward sought to generate with this leak.

@ThankYouKun I wouldn't say the 'whole world' has rejected responding to terrorism with war; Obama is actively continuing the war in Afghanistan and has made it quite clear that he does believe it is justified.

All I've got to say on the matter is that there's an envelope to be pushed in the videogame industry: an envelope of perceptions.

Such scenes are frequently used in books, TV and movies to establish the evilness of the villains. According to rumors, in the case of this game, you're not even one of the villains, but rather an undercover agent. And apparently you also don't need to shoot anyone if you so please, heck, you can skip the entire segment if you find it too jarring.

Any, if all, opposition to this will come from those who see the videogame industry as a child's medium: and that's a perception that needs to be shattered. So bravo to Infinity Ward for pushing an envelope: even if it is an uncomfortable one, because it's an envelope that needs to be pushed if the public is to realize that video games are not just for children anymore.

(Also, at least they push the agenda better than Rockstar do. I'm still surprised that there wasn't a second scandal when the first DLC pack for GTA4 was released: it did have a digital penis in it, after all.)

mattholomew said...> The novel is clearly a racist document and in > fact is believed to have been direct inspiration > for the Oklahoma City bombing.

So what if it influenced it? if it didn't exist something else would have influenced the Oklahoma bombings. Books, video games, music, etc. only influence crazy people because they lack imagination and they are crazy to begin with.

The Son of Sam serial killer got his instruction from a dog. Should we ban pets? What about the children who play with dogs? are they in danger?

Suggesting that if the book didn't exist the bombing wouldn't have occurred is ludicrous.

In GTA 4, I was forced to knife a guy in his office in order to complete the submission. I didn't want to do it. I spent 20 minutes looking for a way out or an alternative to killing him. There was none.

I felt regret. Maybe it was poor programming (a lack of alternate choices). In the best scenario, it was pre-planned to make me feel uncomfortable and remorse.

I still think about it and that is an experience in a game I hope never to face in real life.

@Artemus I'm not suggesting that the Turner Diaries 'caused' the Oklahoma City bombing, and I'm not suggesting that anything should be banned. But I am saying that a work of fiction doesn't get a moral pass just because it didn't actually happen. If, as Shawn suggested, the MW2 scene ends up as purely a shock piece without 'earning' it in the narrative, then that is not OK with me - just as it wasn't OK for them to 'leak' their video last week with an obvious homophobic slur. Of course it would be ridiculous to suggest that the video be banned, but it's absolutely acceptable for people to express their outrage at Infinity Ward and vote with their pocketbooks.

First off, before putting in my two cents, I'll kind of give you an idea of what happens in this scene, as I've seen it played from start to finish:

At the beginning of the game, before you get a gun, you have the option of skipping / bypassing the controversial material.

When you do reach this point, You're a CIA operative infiltrating a circle of terrorists, in order to gain their trust you must join them on a terrorist attack at a foreign airport.

In a mission briefing, your superior officer states something along the lines of "this will cost you a piece of yourself, but its a small price for victory/the greater good".

You are forced to walk the first half of the mission while you shoot at civilians and a handful of security guards. The fact that you have to walk kind of forces you to feel the weight of your actions, you cant run through the scene and trigger a transition, you're strapped in for the 'ride'.

If you shoot the other terrorists, they kill you and you start over.

Eventually the civilians are all dead, and you face military opponents.

I wont spoil the rest of the scene for anyone who may be interested, but now heres my commentary for anyone who cares to read:

I don't feel infinity ward included this game content as a publicity stunt. It seems very thought out, and the fact that you must opt in to play the content says they were aware of the controversy and either avoided responsibility by leaving it up to the player, or simply respected peoples beliefs and feelings on a touchy situation.

The scene strikes a deep chord, I don't believe it is owed to the developers ability to deliver a cinematic and moving experience, but simply because the idea is unnerving.

I personally would choose to play through the level, no matter how it manages to make you feel something so deep, be it by the premise alone, or how well the developers delivered - it affects you, stirs you, makes you feel something deep and most likely wrong.

That is an experience un-matched in todays gaming standards.

In a time where developers strive to make games more sensory and realistic, striking up profound emotions can be considered a success, this is a success. Though I do feel the storyteller is cheating.

It will be a greater success for video games to strike this sort of chord while not treading such shaky grounds.

I'm not saying this is right or wrong, whether or not the developer fulfilled it's obligations... but at the end of the day, its up to you to buy the game, and its up to you whether you opt in or out of the controversial scenes.

I saw this scene at a friends house last night. It is an absolute work of art. The music, graphics, and overall ambiance is absolutely perfect. I am going to buy this game AND an xbox360 JUST BECAUSE of the airport scene. I want to support anybody who uses freedom in the correct way. It even inspired me to develop my own game. It is called "Do Drugs and kill innocents for fun, just because I can".......Real Freedom, using every drop of it.

Infinity Ward have set the bar for realistic, gritty displays of modern combat, not the fluffy version often portrayed in some other mediums. There game is a non-censored, brutal account that condemns violence at the same time as it applauds the heroism of those who fight on the front line.

Many forms of media stop there. IW goes farther and asks us to reverse roles, to jar us out of that comfortable place where we consider ourselves the heroes. It asks us to consider the depths we would go to, to win.

It's disturbing; of course it is. We don't like to consider that the people who protect our liberty are not saints, that they are in fact, men and women trained to kill on command.

This is another view that Infinity Ward presents.

To view the offending level, "No Russian", through the eyes of a bystander or through another third party viewpoint just doesn't work.

For one, it is counter to the style IW has established through the last game, and therefore fails its own standard of story telling.

The other reason is much more simple. IW's instinct is to present it that way. To bow because of pressure from people, mostly who have never, and will never play the game, would be moral cowardice on their part. Luckily, they've never turned away from portraying war for what it is.

Good for them that they didn't present a happy, "Go hero" version of war, and instead made us hate it.

It's pure commentary on war, and should not be judged outside of the context in which it is presented.

Unfortunately, it looks set to be the next in a line of media scapegoats by a world that doesn't have the courage to find the real solutions to today's problems.

I feel like the moment would lose its emotional content if it were filtered through us watching from an outside source, such as before coming to fight the terrorists. I also believe that it would send a different message, one of 'terrorism is horrible', rather than 'terrorism is horrible, and so is having to sacrifice for the greater good'.

One point that all of the media is leaving out is that you don't have to shoot the civilians. You're allowed to fake it and shoot above them and still complete it. I've watched a friend walk through the whole level and he didn't kill a single civilian.

I think IW is brilliant, they hav effectivelz worked both sides of the system. They've created a meaningful, powerful and disturbing scene an admittedly adult game. It's textbook anti-war material, like Apocalypse Now and other such movies. They have also created something that is controversial and will help further stimulate sales. They've even forced parents to pay attention to what their kids are playing. They know people in the media will take it out of context, but in a situation where it could be banned or modified, intelligence can still prevail. I love in Germany but own the US copy of the game. The German version doesn't allow you to partake in the massacre, just watch. There are several other variations in other countries. That's fine. For the first time I feel the ratings board, the game creator and the target audience have all acted appropriately and responsibly. People who feel otherwise are mostly just misinformed and are taking it all out of context.

@Imbarcus Modern Warfare 2 did find it's way onto Fox News, but even though they predictably jumped to illogical conclusions and all that other fun stuff you'd expect from their brilliant minds, it all blew over very fast, thankfully. So fast that a significant amount of people, such as yourself, didn't even realize it happened.

I do have to say that the man on the air defending MW2 did a terrible, terrible job. Geoff Keighley did much better defending Mass Effect 2, not that even he could get through the impenetrably thick skulls of their so-called journalists. Although, I'd love to see our very own Mr. Elliot give it a shot someday.

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Another great feature of this model is that the plates are 100% ceramic and are coated with tourmaline crystal. Furthermore, Tourmaline emits 6 times more negative ions than does ceramic. Negative ions close cuticles thereby locking in moisture. This means that hair is less ghd straighteners damaged and stays straighter for longer. These hair straighteners also come with Dynamic Alignment System. The plates aren't rigidly fixed, but will move slightly to follow the contours of your hair. This helps to ensure that heat is applied evenly. Both the dynamic alignment and the tourmaline are excellent features that most other instruments lack - the Corioliss flat iron also comes with these features and is, in my opinion, one of the best styling instruments on the market, but it costs a lot more than the ghd.4I’ve ever tried on a lot of styles of TR Jeans, but only have a few in my closet. I really like trouser jeans, so both the Emma style and Sammy are my favorite. Both have flat pockets in the back, but they look completely different. Emma has rounded pockets –Sammy has square. ghd outletBoth fit similarly, like trousers—and balance my humongous hips. Becky’s are a versatile pair of bootcut jeans with flap pockets, and tend to run large in some washes –so you may be able to size down if you’d like a snug fit. True Religion is the king of vanity sizing, in terms of pairs running incredibly large.Some people size down 1 or even 2 depending on how stretchy the wash is. Dark Lovestruck for example runs one large, the one pair I own is a size down from my normal 7 For All Mankind and Citizens of Humanity Size. Of course, cheap ghdalthough I do not own any, every woman should have a pair of TR rainbows in their closet. Bring all the attention to the pockets –that’s what TR jeans is known for: pocket detailing and impeccable stitching.5As a desire to mask their identity, celebrities and film stars wear Gucci ghd hair straighteners. They can also wear them due to the production lighting being more forceful than natural light. Sunglasses namely on the beach have been a popular fashion statement since the 1950s. The color of the lens can actually vary by fashion, purpose and style.As many individuals find direct sunlight too bright and uncomfortable on the eyes, sunglasses are a wonderful visual aid to prevent blinding light from reaching the eyes. Sunglasses work best in outdoor activities, such as flying, riding, skiing and motorcycling. Doctors recommend to wear sunglasses whenever outside to protect our eyes from ultraviolet radiation. This can lead to the serious development of cataract.

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